Around September 23, 1883

In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...

After the United States won its freedom and began to expand itself westward, many of the cities throughout the country began to flourish in their own specific ways. A journal kept by Captain Willard W. Glazier recorded a variety of cities he visited while traveling through the United States in the late 1800s. Captain Glazier visited many cities, including San Francisco.

Education has always been the most stressed issue advocated by Civil Rights activists. From education one gains knowledge of his or her surroundings and from that knowledge can go forth to establish oneself in the ever-changing world. For African-Americans, education was paramount in the fight for equality. Though creating schools for blacks was not easy in the late 19th century south, some innovative...

Saturday, October 20, 1883 William Gaston used pages in The Huntsville Gazette to publish an article that shocked the black community. The headline read, “The Civil Rights Act: The United States Supreme Court Declares the Act Unconstitutional.” According to Gaston, “These cases [presented to the Supreme Court] were respectively prosecutions under that act for not admitting certain colored...

Racial tension in the late 19th century peaked in the Southeastern United States. Blacks fought what seemed to be an impossible objective as they sought out equality in a predominately white world. Nevertheless slow and steady progress was being made as African American advanced in social, political, and economic arenas. These establishments brought with them the wrath of Southern white fear...

On November 3, 1883, a black man refused to move off the sidewalk for a white man, and the ensuing violence caused a riot throughout the city of Danville as whites and blacks were attacked each other. One white man and five black men were killed. Each side blamed the other for starting the riot. Its repercussions sent shockwaves through the state of Virginia, especially with the November elections...

On the morning of November 13, in Birmingham, Alabama, the United States Senate Sub-Committee on Education and Labor resumed session. Witnesses were gathered from all over the state to testify to the committee, many of them hailing from the Gulf Coast of Mobile, Alabama. Two prominent white residents of the county testified about the cotton and coal production in the state, suggesting economic improvements...

A casual reader of the Southerner & Appeal might have noticed a column titled To the Women of Georgia. Mrs. Richard Webb, of Savannah, Georgia, was an ardent member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In her letter to the newspaper, she insisted that women take up the cause of prohibition and promote alcohol education for young children in order to prevent drunkenness in adulthood....

African Americans have endured a lot of hardships throughout the civil war time period leading up to Reconstruction. Historians have found evidence and were able to piece the history of the time period due to documents left behind from people, allowing readers to understand the conditions that plagued the African American population during the Civil War and Reconstruction period. Important...

In the winter of 1882, Frank G. Carpenter watched all the members of Congress as they descended upon Washington in preparation for the upcoming session. With them appeared lobbyists galore, bureaucrats too many to number and Washingtonians coming from the woodwork with something to sell to the incoming crowds. The city was booming; boarders and hotel owners were tidying and revitalizing their accommodations...